


EXO Back Next Door: Episode 8

by ellieq_e



Series: Exo Back Next Door [8]
Category: EXO (Band), 우리 옆집에 EXO 가 산다 | EXO Next Door
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28406688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellieq_e/pseuds/ellieq_e
Summary: It's a race against time as the summer comes to a close. Will Chanyeol and Ji Yeon-Hee ever end up together?
Relationships: Ji Yeon Hee/Park Chanyeol
Series: Exo Back Next Door [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/963633
Kudos: 1





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series! My interpretation of if EXO Next Door had a second season :)

As the last week of July came to a close, Chanyeol and Ji’s friends and family were starting to worry. Despite their rocky start and shaky, kiss-based reconciliation, all the members of Exo had secretly been rooting for the couple to pull through, for their true love to shine the way for their happily ever after and to bring hope to them all.

As they sat around the table along with Ji’s best friend Gae-un, her brother Gwangsu, and her stern but caringly protective Mama Park, they began to discuss the conundrum at hand.

“Ji and Chanyeol haven’t spoken to each other in four whole days,” said Gae-un, laying out the situation for everyone.

D.O. nodded gravely at the situation. “It’s not like them to not speak to each other at all,” he said, speaking from first-hand witness experience. “Even when one of them is displeased with the other, they usually show it through indirect ways.”

“And you’re sure you’ve seen absolutely no sign of these ‘indirect ways’ in the past few days?” asked Mama Park, putting D.O.’s words in suspicious air quotes.

“Not at all,” Baekhyun shook his head, saddened at the thought of his good friend being cooped up in his room alone. 

“He hasn’t stopped songwriting since the day he got back from the coffee shop,” said Kai, touching the sore spot that nobody wanted to relive. Everyone looked away, at the floor, at each other, but not each other’s faces.

Finally, Sehun leaned forward, catching his friend Gwangsu’s plan. He raised his eyebrow up, to which Gwangsu nodded in the grave manner of a master martial artist. The rest of the members present watched with interest.

“How about this:” suggested Sehun, turning to the larger group. “If it really is meant to be, they will find a way about getting together. If not, then there is nothing we can do to keep them from staying apart.”

“Gwangsu and I have an idea…” he said, to which everyone looked in surprise at the grave yet neurotic mere high school student in a red track suit.

He nodded, gesturing for Sehun, their duo’s assumed mouthpiece, to continue.

“So how about this…”

…  
In his room, Chanyeol was furiously writing. Not exactly furiously songwriting, as his bandmates had assumed and perhaps hoped, but strongly stated, very professional legal documents. He scribbled out a word again and dug through the pile of papers he had printed out for another.

Finally giving up with an exacerbated sigh, he rubbed his temples and picked up his phone. 

“…Hello?” the person on the end picked up after two rings.

“Yes, it’s me, Chanyeol,” he said curtly.

“Oh, Chanyeol,” the voice on the other end purred, and he could practically feel her reptilian-looking lips curl into a satisfied smile.

“So you really want me to do it, then?” she asked. “You realize what you’re authorizing is irreversible, right?” she asked, baiting him mercilessly with an out.

“Yes,” Chanyeol responded curtly. “Do it.”

“Ok, then, it’s done,” the woman on the other end said, her, hard, brittle nail tapping against the enter key on her keyboard. “Done and done.”

Good, Chanyeol thought.

“Bye,” he hung up the phone curtly, collapsing onto his bed, exhausted.

The deed had been done.


	2. The Race

“EEeee!” Ji woke up to the sound of screaming. Not screaming of the usual kind, either, which usually entailed Mama Park’s scolding voice telling her to haul her lazy butt out of bed. No, this screaming was of an entirely unique strain altogether, one that she had once encountered coming after her in the hallways of her university cafeteria.

Blink. Ji’s eyes popped wide open. Scrambling to her feet, she shuffled to the window and, braving the glare of the bright morning sunlight, peered out the window. She rubbed her eyes vigorously with both hands, as she was wont to do when she saw something before that she couldn’t quite believe. But sure enough, the vision before her stayed as was. Just as she had expected: a screaming mass of fangirls.

Running down the stairs to the kitchen, Ji was prepared to storm right over to the neighboring unit and demand an explanation for all this commotion. Clearly, unless her aging, gray-haired mother or her neurotic, nerdy brother had become famous overnight, this surely had to be the work of her super star neighbors.

“Exo,” she muttered foully under her breath.

“Oh, Exo,” her mother stopped her as she was halfway out the door. “They left this morning. At the crack of dawn. As soon as the first camped-out fangirls and decked-out news vans started arriving, they packed up everything and left at the crack of dawn.”

Crack of dawn.

Those words hit Ji like a ton of bricks. It was just like the last time he had left then, without an adequate goodbye, never a virtual hello, and at exactly the crack of dawn. A little sob built up in her throat, the same as the one she had gotten wishing he had never entered her life.

Ahh. She almost fell into her mother’s arms. She had no idea what she wanted anymore.

“Oh, stop crying child, I know where they are,” the usually gruff Mama Park softened her tone. At this tidbit of information, Ji did, indeed stop crying, although her breath still came in little hitches and her perpetually reddened cheeks remained in their inflamed, reddened state.

Patting her daughter’s head, she wrote down the address on the back of a hotel key card.

“What the?”

Her mother winked. “You brother is outside to escort you if you choose to go—”

The words were barely out of her mouth as her daughter began barreling out the door in nothing but her pajamas. For once, her mother stopped her with a gentler tug (by Mama Park’s standards, anyway) and directed her to the bathroom with a fresh change of clothes.

“You’ll thank me later,” she whispered, giving her daughter a gentle nudge.

Used to obliging to Mama Park’s every demand, Ji exited the bathroom five minutes later looking decidedly more decent-looking than she had before, with a beautifully flowing nice purple dress on and a delicately convenient strawberry-colored purse in hand.

For some reason, it looked like Mama Park almost had tears in her eyes as she gave her daughter another push out the door.

“He’s waiting,” she said.

…  
Not even the insanely heavy wind on the road that day or the insanely insane crowd of fangirls outside the house that morning could ruin Ji’s spirits as she held on to the back of her brother’s bicycle as he pedaled her out of the neighborhood. With the jam of vehicles, both pedestrian, two-wheeled, and four-wheeled, clogging up the streets, there was no way she would have gotten out of the street in a car, and no way would she have gotten out as fast on foot.

When they finally reached a not-so-busy intersection as the road opened onto the main street, her brother was out of breath.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Gwangsu,” Ji hopped off, leaning forward to give her brother a kiss on the cheek.

He looked taken aback, never used to receiving affection from her, but he nodded at her dutifully, bowing to her curtly.

As she flagged down a cab and waved back at him as she pulled away, he managed to call after her between his panting breaths.

“Good luck, sister,” he called.  
…  
In the back of the taxi, Ji’s stomach began to do flip-flops, feeling nervous for the first time all morning. What if he didn’t want to see her? What if he refused to see her? What if he wanted nothing to do with her anymore and never wanted to see her again? These thoughts raced through her mind as she reminded herself to keep deep breaths, keeping her hands folded across her lap so she could keep her breathing even.

As she saw the signs of the city come into view, the doubt in her stomach grew heavier and heavier. But shaking her head, she didn’t let her face turn red. She had come so far already. It couldn’t be all for nothing.

Suddenly, her taxi pulled to a stop, slowly rolling into the circular driveway of Seoul’s Good Good Five Star Hotel. Ji tried not to stare at all the fancy limos and shiny cars that were milling about, coming in and out from the underground parking lot beside them. The boy who owned her heart was up in that hotel right there. So she belonged there, too.

Tipping the driver of her taxi handsomely, she took a deep breath and got out, stepping onto the bright red and fuzzy red welcome mat.

Welcome to a luminous life, it read.  
…  
Pacing before the floor-to-ceiling windows of his spacious hotel room, Chanyeol eyed his bandmates like an animal stuck in a cage.

“Just let me out! I have to go see her!” he growled at them. He had not once, but twice, even swiped at his elder Suho, who had taken the brunt of the force used to restrain him. Having quickly learned that he was outmatched, he had now resorted to eying them ferally, practically ready to bite one of their heads off if they came too close.

“I’m sorry, we can’t do that,” said Baekhyun with sorrowful eyes. Usually the sweetest of them there, even he wouldn’t help his friend find his way to the freedom he so desperately needed to be reunited with his girl.

“Ahh! I did this all for her!” he cried in anguish. Clearly, as they all knew without saying, it had backfired miserably.

Finally deflating like a broken balloon, he crumpled to the floor, leaning his head against the foot of his bed.

“When do we head out?” he asked miserably.

…  
Ji took the stairs three at a time, running up that grand staircase like she had never run before. In the lobby, guest turned to stare, no doubt thinking she looked like a potential escaped convict on the run from the law. Or, rather, by the looks of her strawberry-print purse, probably the loony house.

No matter. No matter what they thought, she didn’t care. She was a girl on a mission, who wouldn’t be stopped by broken elevators of a very public-looking flight of stairs.

Finally, when she reached the landing, she was out of breath. She didn’t think she had ever run that much that fast in her life. Heaving her way down the hall of the hotel floor, she made her way to room 306.

Exhausted, she knocked on the door.

…

Chanyeol looked up when he heard the knock on the door. Who could that be now? His managers come to tell him that they had added even more extra tour dates and that they would have to leave this beautiful city right this very instant?

To his surprise, his bandmates were looking around at each other with grins on their face, mixed with looks of relief and excitement. They looked to him to get the door. What was going on? Numbly, he got up off the floor to go to the door, curiously noting that his bandmates were almost lining his path like footmen, bowing at his very passing. Not even the band’s elder, Suho, tried to restrain him as he placed his hand on the knob. It was as if everyone in the room was beaming with anticipation, urging him to go on, do it, do it, do it.

Looking around and a bit weirded out by all their weirdness, he shrugged and turned his hand on the knob. Oh well, here goes nothing, he thought.

And then he opened the door to see Ji Yeon-hee collapsed in a pile of rice cakes.


End file.
